After spending way too many hours researching and writing deep dives last year, I wanted to share some of the most fascinating growth strategies I stumbled across.
In a recent episode of the Growth In Reverse podcast, Dylan and I chatted about some of these interesting growth strategies and I wanted to share more of those here.
1. Khe’s Sneaky-Smart Lead Magnet Strategy
This one’s pretty clever. Khe Hy (from RadReads) had gotten really good at using
He’d post Twitter threads about
But the genius part was in how he shared that information – he included Loom videos showing exactly how to do everything.
The videos were completely free, no email required. But he added a subtle “Subscribe” button in the corner of each video.
People shared these threads like crazy because he was giving away valuable content for free.
They weren’t sharing a lead magnet or an ask for email signups – they were sharing actually helpful content. And that “Subscribe” button? Just sitting there for when people wanted more.
I didn’t even know you could add custom buttons to Loom videos until I saw this in action.
Read the full deep dive into Khe Hy >>
2. Aakash’s “Internal Share” Strategy
Here’s a fun one from Aakash Gupta, who writes Product Growth. He accidentally stumbled onto something brilliant.
He wrote this piece called “The Ultimate Guide to Onboarding” and noticed he was suddenly getting tons of paid subscribers from Meta (the company, not the platform).
Turns out someone on their product team found the article, shared it internally, and boom – loads of product folks with L&D budgets started subscribing.
After that, he started focusing heavily into how he could “optimize for the internal share” – creating content specifically meant to be shared in Slack channels and internal forums at big tech companies.
Smart, right?
Read the full deep dive into Aakash’s growth to over 153k subscribers >>
3. Kyla’s Video-to-Newsletter Pipeline
Most people will tell you to stick to written platforms when growing a newsletter. Kyla Scanlon didn’t want to do that, and instead said “hold my beer” while building an audience of 69,000 newsletter subscribers largely through TikTok and Instagram.
She takes complex economic topics and makes them digestible and entertaining (someone called it “chocolate-covered almond content” – love that phrase).
The cool part? She proves you can reliably convert video viewers into newsletter subscribers, which goes against what most people believe.
Better yet, she uses her short-form content as market research. If a TikTok (RIP?) hits big, she knows there’s appetite for a deeper dive in her newsletter. Genius way to test topics before investing time in longer content.
Read the full story about Kyla Scanlon’s growth >>
4. Yossi’s Exclusive Tips Strategy
Yossi Levi (The Car Dealership Guy) built his whole newsletter around getting exclusive industry intel. It started with him just aggregating interesting information about the car dealership space and sharing it before most people knew about it.
Pretty soon, he became the go-to news source for the entire industry.
What’s really interesting is that he started anonymously. By keeping his identity private at first, he created this environment where industry insiders felt comfortable sending him sensitive information. They knew they could trust him with their tips because he had proven himself responsible with insider info.
Here’s a perfect example: In March 2024, he got an anonymous tip in his inbox – someone had sent him a picture of an internal email at Stellantis (that’s the parent company of Jeep, Dodge, Ram, and Chrysler).
The email simply told all employees they’d be working from home the next day.
Yossi posted this with a simple observation: “Smells like layoffs are coming.”
24 hours later? He was right. 400 positions were cut.
The comments on that post really show why this strategy works. One person wrote “You are on the inside of the inside with this info.” That kind of reputation is gold for a newsletter.
This isn’t just working in the car industry either. Gergely with The Pragmatic Engineer does something similar with his “The Scoop” section – getting anonymous tips from tech startups and bigger companies.
When you become known as the trusted source for insider info, people start coming to you with stories.
A deep dive into Car Dealership Guy’s growth >>
5. Dr. Julie Gurner’s Platform Pivots
Here’s what I love about Dr. Gurner’s approach – she knows when to pivot platforms and isn’t afraid to experiment with new ones. While most creators get stuck trying to revive a dying platform, she’s mastered the art of knowing when to move on.
Let’s break down her platform journey:
Quora Era (2014-2016) She crushed it on Quora in the mid-2010s, becoming a three-time top writer. Back then, Quora was THE place for thoughtful, long-form answers. But when the returns started diminishing, she started looking elsewhere.
The Twitch Experiment This is where it gets interesting. Instead of just jumping to another written platform, she decided to try something completely different: Twitch. And not for gaming!
She’s one of the few non-gaming experts who managed to build an audience there, which shows her willingness to experiment outside her comfort zone.
Twitter Takeover (2020-Present?) In 2020, she made another pivot, this time to Twitter. Starting with just 7,000 followers, she grew her audience to over 135,000. That’s nearly 20x growth!
She took all the expertise and authority she’d built on other platforms and adapted it for Twitter’s format.
And now it kind of looks like she’s expanding again to LinkedIn and Substack Notes as the Twitter/X algorithm has changed quite a bit.
This is particularly relevant right now.
With all the changes happening on social platforms, Dr. Gurner shows us it’s okay to test new platforms while they’re emerging and leave ones that aren’t serving you anymore.
Read more about Dr. Julie Gurner’s newsletter growth >>
6. Ben’s Reply Guy Strategy
Okay, this one’s both brilliant and potentially annoying if done wrong. Ben from Ben’s Bites would reply to tweets about AI tools saying “Shouting this out in tomorrow’s newsletter!” Simple, right?
He did this so consistently that people started calling him “the reply guy” – but here’s the thing: it worked. He once replied to Google’s CEO and that single reply got 26,000 views and hundreds of subscribers.
The best part? He learned this tactic from his Product Hunt days with Ryan Hoover.
Why reinvent the wheel when you can reuse what works?
The deep dive into Ben’s Bites newsletter growth >>
7. Tom’s LinkedIn System
Tom Alder turned LinkedIn growth into a science.
He started with a 30-day posting challenge that turned into a 900-day streak, growing his Strategy Breakdowns newsletter to 5k before he even launched it!
Now he’s got over 60k subscribers.
He created a whole system around engagement:
- Commenting on other posts before publishing his own
- Specific timing for when to add his own comments
- When to include links (hint: not right away)
- How to optimize the first hour after posting
The man has a whole
There’s more to it than that, but you can read the full breakdown of this strategy here.
A Few Takeaways From These Examples
After diving back into these strategies I pulled out last year, a few things stand out:
- Some of the best growth tactics usually aren’t the obvious ones (Loom videos, who knew?!)
- What works on one platform today might not work tomorrow. Be willing to pivot and know that growth on many social platforms may have an expiration date.
- Being the first or only source for something specific is incredibly powerful. I think about these “exclusives” a lot, and know that they can be the reason your content starts to take off.
- You don’t have to do everything perfectly – consistency often beats perfection.
You can watch or listen to the full breakdown of this post over here. And make sure to leave some comments, I’m always interested in hearing your takes on these strategies.
